Children who are adopted after being in foster care do equally well whether the adoptive parents are gay, lesbian, or straight, according to a new study.

Psychologists from the University of California, Los Angeles, evaluated 82 high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angeles County, of whom 60 were placed with heterosexual parents and 22 with gay or lesbian parents. The researchers assessed the children at three points after their placement with the families: two months, one year, and two years.

“On average, children in both household types showed significant gains in cognitive development and maintained similar levels of behavior problems over time, despite gay and lesbian parents raising children with higher levels of biological and environmental risks prior to adoptive placement,” the psychologists wrote in the study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. “Results demonstrated that high-risk children show similar patterns of development over time in heterosexual and gay and lesbian adoptive households.” On average, the children’s IQ scores increased by 10 points.

The message of the study, said coauthor Letitia Anne Peplau, is that “there is no scientific basis to discriminate against gay and lesbian parents.” Read more here and here.